The Centre for Development Finance, in association with The Asia Foundation , has commenced a pilot project to develop a process for stakeholder participation in local economic planning. Four pilot districts have been chosen for this project: Thanjavur, Namakkal, Thiruvallur and Chennai.

The pilot process envisages having a local public-private dialogue (PPD) to

• Enhance awareness of issues among local communities.
• Create a process that helps community members reach a consensus about priorities
• Build a bridge between community stakeholders, local, and higher levels of government by creating a platform for clear communication about priorities.

We hope that this process would assist in measuring and representing local conditions to inform state and national policy, and we intend to document both the outcomes of the PPDs as well as our experience in convening and conducting them. These research findings will be presented for comment and discussion at seminars in Tamil Nadu as well as New Delhi so that they can be assessed as inputs into the current efforts to strengthen local planning and prioritization.

CDF has initiated this research project after a detailed study of the district and intensive efforts to bring together a set of stakeholders for the each district. We take utmost care to ensure a wide stakeholder participation in the PPD, both from the government, private and the social entrepreneur segments.The Asia Foundation (TAF), an international NGO with extensive experience in participatory processes, is supporting CDF in designing and implementing the pilot Public-Private Dialogues.